So says Dr. Ben Carson, celebrated neurosurgeon and newly minted star of the extreme political right. Speaking last week in Washington before the so-called Values Voter Summit, he said, "Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is ... in a way, it is slavery."

At one level, the comment is sadly unremarkable. Dr. Carson is only obeying commandments that are evidently chiseled on a stone tablet somewhere for all the extreme right to follow:

Thou shalt not understate;

Thou shalt not be thoughtful;

Thou shalt not make a lick of sense.

Accordingly, it has become common for the extremes to liken health-care reform to slavery. This juxtaposition, asinine on its face, has been embraced by New Hampshire state legislator Bill O'Brien, Rep. John Fleming and Rush Limbaugh, among others. Again: not surprising. Hyperbolic nonsense is the water in which the extremes swim.

But, of course, the claim carries a different weight coming from Dr. Carson by dint of the fact that he is African-American. It becomes a gift to the white right, inoculating them (or so they will surely feel) against charges of racism or racial insensitivity when they say the same stupid thing. That Dr. Carson would give that gift suggests an unseemly obsequiousness, an eagerness to please at all costs, even if that cost is one's own soul.

The Affordable Care Act, should it need saying, may be a bad law, may be a good law, may be something in between. But it is assuredly not "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."

In making that claim to the enthusiastic approval of a room full of white conservatives, Dr. Carson is, ironically, reminiscent of those slaves who identified so fully with "marse" and "ole miss," craved their approval so desperately, that they lost their very selves.

It is one thing for white conservatives to sing "nobody knows de trouble I'se seen" and proclaim themselves victims of slavery. It is quite another for an African-American man who, by definition, should know better, to second that delusion and thereby lend their racism a sheen of respectability.

The question of why he would so fully betray heritage is best left between Dr. Carson and his mirror — or, perhaps, between Dr. Carson and his mental health professional. The effects of that betrayal are, however, easy enough to enumerate.

It calls into question Dr. Carson's grasp of basic history. It further damages the GOP "brand" and the party's professed goal of outreach.

Worse, it trivializes one of the great sins of the last millennium, urinates on the unmarked graves of ancestors for a cheap rhetorical stunt. As such, the statement is beneath contempt.

I am a 50-something, Jesuit-educated, Libertarian-leaning registered Democrat who has been reading Thomas F. Schaller's column for years. He has the luxury of at least being accepted around liberals and only being castigated by conservatives. Libertarian thinkers eventually are attacked by both...

Thomas Schaller makes a strong case that Dr. Ben Carson should stick to medicine ("Carson should stick to medicine," Feb. 3). Mr. Schaller did not need to stray far for evidence: He cites Dr. Carson's own public pronouncements for curing the nation's ills, namely, his call for a flat tax...

How can columnist Thomas F. Schaller compare Michael Jordan trying to hit a 95-mph fastball to Ben Carson being president of the United States? Is he saying a community organizer was more prepared to be president than Dr. Carson ("Ben Carson should stick to medicine," Feb. 3)?

I find it interesting that columnist Thomas F. Schaller can champion our "community organizer" president as all-knowing, intelligent and, of all things, competent, yet Ben Carson, a world-renowned brain surgeon and Herman Cain, a very successful business owner, don't have the ability to be...

Thomas F. Schaller's analogy comparing Michael Jordan's attempt to play baseball to Ben Carson's qualifications to be president is asinine ("Carson, stick to medicine," Feb. 4). Why don't we just expand that assertion to dissuade political science teachers from becoming newspaper columnists?

Columnist Thomas F. Schaller makes reference to some prominent individuals who failed to succeed in business, but he may be too young to remember that a shopkeeper named Harry S. Truman defeated a favored Republican, Thomas E. Dewey, in 1946 ("Ben Carson should stick to medicine," Feb. 3).

Thomas F. Schaller's piece on Ben Carson is nothing more than an ad hominem attack, an attack more appropriate to a blog from the fever swamps of the ideological left than a nationally-recognized newspaper ("Carson, stick to medicine," Feb. 4). Frank Kent has to be spinning in his grave.